Echo
How love is said
Five attempts to get desire and devotion into a sentence without turning either into a slogan. They do not agree with each other. That is the conversation.
1 · Sappho
He seems to me equal to the gods, that man who sits facing you and listens close to your sweet speaking.Paul, in a letter about a quarreling church, ranks love above the gifts people were boasting of.
2 · Paul the Apostle
And now abideth faith, hope, charity, these three; but the greatest of these is charity.Shakespeare’s sonnet tries to make a marriage of minds that is not shaken by time.
3 · William Shakespeare
Let me not to the marriage of true minds admit impediments.Browning counts, because a general word will not do.
4 · Elizabeth Barrett Browning
How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.Auden, in September 1939, makes love a public necessity and later doubted his own line.
5 · W. H. Auden
We must love one another or die.